How alliance formation shapes corporate venture capital investment in the software industry: a resource‐based perspective

Abstract

AbstractCorporate venture capital (CVC) investments serve as interfirm relationships that enable established firms to tap into emerging technology markets. Nevertheless, firms may also leverage their strategic alliances to this end. Does alliance formation reinforce or attenuate a firm's tendency to invest in entrepreneurial ventures? We introduce a resource‐based perspective whereby resource complementarity and network resource visibility prompt a reinforcing association between CVC investment and alliance formation. In turn, external resource redundancy and internal resource allocation constraints yield an attenuating effect of alliance formation on CVC investment. Analyzing the alliances and CVC investments of 372 software firms during the 1990s, we reconcile these opposing arguments by revealing an inverted U‐shaped association between CVC investment and alliance formation. Accordingly, the number of CVC investments first increases, but then decreases, with the number of alliances formed. Moreover, the positive association between CVC investment and alliance formation diminishes as firms invest in their internal resource stocks, mature, and accumulate experience with prior CVC investments. We advance strategic entrepreneurship research by elucidating the tendency of established firms to engage in CVC investment and by unpacking the complex association between different types of interfirm relationships that these firms leverage. Copyright © 2010 Strategic Management Society.